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Monday, June 13, 2011

Law & Order Criminal Intent “Cadaver” Recap & Review

All photos from NBCUniversal

I hate to keep repeating myself, but this season of Law & Order Criminal Intent has been the best in several years and I am really sorry to see the series end. “Cadaver” was an excellent episode that had me guessing as to who had the motive to kill; it seemed everyone connected to Ben Langston certainly had one. This was one of those cases where there wasn’t a lot of hard evidence to play with. There was no obvious crime scene and certainly no body – at least not the one they needed – to give them any clues about the killer. It was solid detective work, plain and simple, that brought Goren and Eames to the person who felt that they had the most to lose.

The last segment with Goren in his therapy session was excellent, with Goren finally getting fed up with his sessions and even more so with his therapist, who he thinks is toying with him. While Goren reaching this point wasn’t really too much of a surprise, I was impressed with the way that Vincent D’Onofrio handled the scene where Goren quickly goes from calm and collected to literally getting in the doctor’s face. Goren likes to solve a mystery by challenging others for the truth and I can understand why he wouldn’t take kindly to someone who seems to be evasive when he wants a direct answer. The door slamming at the end and the abrupt black screen said it all – Goren’s mind may now be closed for business as far as these therapy sessions. We can only wait and see in the final episodes if there is any hope of opening him back up again.

Here is the recap:
Ben Langston (Steven Weber), philanthropist and head of Langston pharmaceuticals, watches as a robotic surgical procedure takes place on a cadaver. As he tests the controls, Theo Kendall (Clayton Apgar) asks him if he read a proposal that he made on spinal cord regeneration. Later, Theo speaks with 2 of his colleagues, Maya Zhuang (Camille Chen) and Sam Harris (Charlie Barnett), about who will win Langston’s grant that night. Maya says she is going to the event with her mother. Later at home, Langston speaks with his wife Lauren (Jenna Stern) about the new equipment. She says she isn’t going to the event as she feels a migraine coming on. His daughter Stella comes in with a drawing for him.

At the Bedford Institute at the dedication of the DaVinci surgical training suite, Langston announces that the winner of the Langston research grant is Maya Zhuang. Later, Maya’s mother Joanne Zhuang (Rosalind Chao) tells Maya to thank Langston again, and they overhear Dr. Harris arguing with Langston. Later, when Langston’s wife comes home she finds that Langston is not there.

The next morning, a jogger find a body in the park – a body with no hair and huge surgical incision on his head.

Detectives Bobby Goren (Vincent D’Onofrio) and Alex Eames (Kathryn Erbe) are at the home of Lauren Langston who has reported her husband missing for the weekend. His car is also missing. She tells them Ben dreamed of being a doctor.

Back at Major Case, Eames and Goren speak with Captain Hannah (Jay O. Sanders) about Langston’s disappearance. It does not appear to be a kidnapping. Langston’s Bentley was found in a parking structure at Pier 92 – a cruise ship terminal.

Goren and Eames head to the location to check out the car. Langston’s name was not on any of the lists for the cruise ships that left that weekend. The car entered the area at 2:40 AM Saturday but the driver was obscured.. Goren notices that the driver’s seat is set for a much shorter person than Langston. They open the trunk and Eames notices the smell of formaldehyde. Goren thinks there was a body in the trunk that was already embalmed. Goren recalls a John Doe that appeared in Riverside park with unusual cuts like a dissection.

Back at the lab, Theo speaks with Maya about Langston and tells her she should get out of the lab more. She says she would rather hang out with the rats. Harris also speaks with her about the other night and said what they said was between them. She tells him she has a lot of work to do.

At the morgue, ME Rodgers (Leslie Hendrix) tells the detectives that the body has already been dissected and has been dead for over a year. Eames thinks the Bedford Institute must use cadavers for their medical school. The body was propped up in the park wearing a suit. Goren notices that the clothes seem to resemble what Langston was last seen in.

At the institute, Goren and Eames speak with a man who work there who identified the body as “Popeye”, real name Joe Slobotnik a man who was in the navy and died of meningitis and his body was donated by the family. The guy thinks it may have been a prank. Slobotnik’s body was scheduled to be cremated that day and the coffin was picked up at 6 that morning.

At the funeral home, there is a service going on for Slobotnik. Goren and Eames tell the funeral director (Geoffrey Cantor ) the body that was cremated may not have been Slobotnik and ask for the remains.

Back at Major Case, Eames tells Hannah that there was a titanium pin in the remains that belongs to Langston. They think the killer dressed the cadaver in Langston’s clothes to buy time so Langston’s body can be cremated. Hannah wonders if one of the losers of the grant took offense.

The detectives, at the Bedford Institute Research Lab, speak with Dr. Harris who says he met Maya after the event. The detectives later speak with Maya about her meeting with Harris and she says she was him from about midnight until past one for a few drinks. Maya’s mother approaches and mentions an incident last year where one of the researchers, Theo Kendall, made a joke at the benefit last year and was reprimanded by Dean Johnson.

The detectives speak with Theo Kendall and the detectives bring up a harassment complaint Maya made against him. They also discuss a prank he played where he dressed up a cadaver as Lauren Langston and still has the photo on his Facebook page and this was the photo he slipped into a fundraising reel. He blows it off as a joke. Goren brings up that Kendall was passed over twice for the grant, and that Kendall has problems with authority, Goren notices a nice antique microscope and mentions that Langston collected them.

Back at the Langston home, the detectives ask Lauren about the antique microscope who says it may have been a gift from her husband. She thought the prank was funny. She does not think Theo Kendall killed Ben as he doesn’t seem the type. Eames asks to use her bathroom and uses that as excuse to talk to Stella. She asks about Stella calling her father that Friday night, and Stella said she saw her parent’s bed empty and when her mom came home, she knew her mom had a play date because she seemed fuzzy. She was always talking to Theo on the phone.

In the Major Case interrogation room, Theo is being questioned by Eames with his lawyer present who admits Theo was with Lauren. He says sex is fun but not killing someone. Meanwhile, Goren questions Lauren who says Theo did not do it, he was with her at a hotel. Her attorney says he can provide evidence. She says she is guilty of infidelity but not murder. Goren cynically says it’s another marriage built on true love, and adds they get a lot of that around here. Goren presses her on the relationship, and Lauren says Theo made her laugh. Eames continues to press Theo who says he last saw Ben with Sam Harris.

Goren and Eames speak with Harris who admits he argued with Langston but says he did not kill him. Later, Eames mentions to Goren that Harris and Langston have some history, Harris was arrested for trespassing at Langston Pharmaceuticals 6 years ago. It was a protest against animal testing. A woman, Clair Morton, was arrested with him. The charges were dropped.

They speak with Clair who said Sam was against animal testing and that they picketed the entrance. Langston never showed up and Harris would not leave, saying Langston could not treat them like that. She comments that Harris’ mother, who had died, used to work with Langston.

Back at Major Case, they find that Sam’s mother, Regina Harris, worked at a lab at the same time as Langston and they both left about the same time. Sam Harris was born 9 months later. They speak again with Sam and says that Langston was only a “sperm donor” and he mother was abandoned by Langston and that Langston denied them both. Sam says he is better than him and moves to leave but Goren tells him to sit down. Sam says he didn’t want his precious grant and that Langston was spewing lies. They tell him that his mother never made requests for child support, but Sam says Langston was a monster who used him and ran off and married someone else, and he hates Langston. Goren asks Sam why his mother never tried to get anything from Langston but she poisoned Sam against Ben.

Afterwards, the detectives discuss this with Cpt. Hannah who tells them to talk to Lauren Langston to see if she can shed some light. She is surprised at the revelation that Ben had a son. She does not think Ben knew. She adds Ben would have done anything for a boy, they tried. She thinks if Ben knew he had a son that was a doctor he would have given him grant money.

In interrogation, they question Harris again who insists his mother begged Langston to help them. He says his mother was not happy when he applied to Bedford. Goren thinks his mother was afraid Langston would take him away. Harris admits he told Langston that night he was his son, and Langston tried to hug him and would find all his research as a top priority, Harris called him a son of a bitch and left but did not kill him, and he tells them to ask Maya if they don’t believe him – he told Maya, just Maya - when he met her at the bar. She seemed to become affectionate to him but he thinks he misread the signals as a few days later they were back to being just friends.

Later, Goren and Eames wonder why Sam would confess to Maya that Langston was his father if he had killed him. Maybe he thought Maya was his alibi – but Goren recalls that Maya called him.

The detectives speak with Maya’s mother at her home, and Maya comes out of her room. She said she called Sam because things had been tense. She says was shocked when Sam told her Sam was Langston’s son. She went to a few more bars after leaving Sam and went to a few more bars to celebrate, and she shows them some photos she took. Goren also sees a photo of Maya’s sister and she says her mother took the photos down after her sister moved out.

Afterwards, Eames comments that Maya’s bedroom was a shrine to achievement, and Goren adds that Maya grew up in a house where failure was not an option. Goren wonders if Maya was afraid that Langston was going to change his mind.

The detectives speak with Maya’s sister who works at a bar. She says there is no way Maya did anything wrong and that Maya never flinched and never cried. They had a strict upbringing. Maya was living her mother’s life and was the classic good girl. She wanted to be an artist.

Back at the lab, Goren speaks with Maya about her medical research and the need to relax and have fun. He questions her going to 4 bars in one night and thinks the photos are phony and she overcompensated. The call to Sam was just an alibi. He says she knew Langston was Sam’s father before Sam told her because she overheard them arguing. Maya’s mother enters with Eames and tells Maya to stop talking and says they are leaving. Eames tells them they spoke with Maya’s sister and how her mother was and that her standards were unachievable. Goren says Maya is not a killer, she took the oath to do no harm, but her mother did not. Eames accuses Maya’s mother of killing Langston and then Maya switched the body with the cadaver to fix it. Goren also says Maya’s mother also overheard about Sam being Langston’s son, and that she heard Sam would get research money and she panicked that Langston would favor him. Maya blurts out that she killed him but Goren knows that is not true. Her mother admits that she did it and that Maya had no idea. She hit Langston with a centrifuge but that Maya would get rid of the body and switch it. Eames goes on about how Maya handled the cover up, and Maya says they can’t prove any of that. But Goren says she made a mistake by dressing the cadaver in Langston’s clothes. Goren thinks Maya wanted to be caught, because she is a doctor and she saves lives. Her mother says she will sign a full confession but Eames is not willing to let Maya off the hook. Her mother again says she will sign a full confession and will not contest the sentence. When she moves to hug Maya, Goren stops her. She adds her daughter is not going to prison because she is going to cure cancer. Goren cuffs her.

In Dr. Gyson’s (Julia Ormond) office for his therapy session, Goren talks about it being a beautiful day and asks to take the session outside She thinks there is more privacy in there and asks if this is why he wants to go out. He asks her if she always does that, to think that everything is about something else. She was just thinking about the lest session. He brings up that she had asked him if he ever felt lonely or if he had feelings for someone – she adds romantic feelings – and he goes on to say for someone he respects. He said she did not answer his question if it was too late. She asks if he is worried that he missed the boat. He says they don’t have a lot of sessions left and he is a big boy and a grown man. He said she told him his emotional drawbridge is up and he can take it. He asks her to tell him if she thinks he can have what other people have – a home and a relationship. She replies that if he wants to work towards those goals then yes. He asks what that means - no? or is it shrink speak? She asks where this is coming from, and he says he looks in the mirror every day and he sees what she sees. He says this is not working, he asks for her professional judgment and she turns it back on him. He says she is smart and she is someone he respects. She says he wants to know if she sees him as someone being capable of being in a relationship. He seems annoyed and asks if she thinks he is hitting on her. She says no, but he gets up and says he knows what she does, she seems open and empathic and she is beautiful so she gets her patients to trust her and then she pulls back and she toys with them.That is her game, and he gets very upset and says this is not working for him. She says she knows she has inadvertently told him…but he cuts her off and says she should call his captain or One PP or whoever that she reports back to and tell them he is not a good candidate for therapy, getting in her face as he says it. She says he needs to help her understand what she did wrong. As he opens the office door, he says if they want to take his badge away again they can. She says right when he feels the need to run...and he cuts her off to say this isn’t working, it’s not helping, and he slams the door behind him - we abruptly go to black.

Wonderful episode. It kept me guessing too, although from the advance pictures it appeared that Maya and her mom would have a big hand in the murder.

But that last scene with Goren - superb. D'Onofrio at his best. Goren is really more sane and balanced that they give him credit for. The guy has been through a lot. Why does the doctor think he has to have a romantic relatioship to be happy? He just has to be happy with himself and who he is FIRST.

Head shrinkers are really sad people. Dr. Gyson's superiority act gets to me. No wonder Goren behaved that way. I hope things end up OK for Goren and she doesn't mess with his head and make him worse.

an excellent commentary about an excellent episode. i had no idea where this one would end up, which doubled the fun!

it was also fun to see Jenna Stern back, even if her character wasn't as deliciously over the top as last time. (obviously, she was just playing what the script called for; no "we can read a clock, sweetpea!" lines, alas.)

Hi, I just found your blog and want to thank you for it. I'm a big time, longterm LOCI fan.

I think the creative team on LOCI are very clever to use - and certainly not over-use - Vincent D'Onofrio's/Goren's physical strength and presence. Goren is so graceful and measured that the few times we see him come close to losing control it is quite alarming, and in Cadaver he's on the verge of losing it with his shrink, I really felt for both of them. He's getting angry 'cos he feels she's giving him double talk, and she's intimidated by his size and his flare-up.

I'm hoping next time she takes the opportunity to say "what I should have told you is that it's never too late".

Some of your photos here show "the Look".Its Goren not looking at people, but inside them. Its great to see VDO doing this again. He used it in Blind Spot alot,season 6.Its a powerful look,unnerves you.

Goren returns to his desk early, Eames asks what happened. G: I'm really making progress with this doctor. I got mad ... Eames turns back to her reading - Goren getting mad is not news. But - he says - I didn't sweep everything off the table, I didn't tip over the plants, I didn't fake a punch to her face - I barely slammed the door on the way out! Eames looks impressed and says: I always knew you could do it, Bobby!

Diehard LOCI fan here, but I thought this episode capitalized on the whole Asian 'Tiger Mother' thing in a pretty cliche way. That aside: I loved the ending -- thought it subtle and discomforting in brilliant way. Dr. Gyson's more-poised-than-thou attitude has been so irritating! Kudos to Goren for (sort of) calling her out on it.

A bit of typical New York. There was also the scene in Trophy Wine where a yellow cab comes around a corner to be blocked by three police cars with sirens wailing and brakes screeching while the walkers on the sidewalk continue on, with not so much as a turn of the head.

Something more to look for - signs that this is NY and not just some generic large city. It helps to make it one of the few shows that are worth rewatching - there's always a chance of coming across something you missed the first time round.

An example: the scene in The Last Street in Manhattan where Eames' father says she hasn't given him any grandchildren - Goren's half-smile as he watches her is at least ambiguous, if not definitely of the "let-me-know-if-you-need-any-help-with-that" variety - notice how quickly he looks down when he catches himself. If she'd caught Logan looking at her like that, he'd have winked, Zach would have given her a broad smile. But Goren? Impossible. And in a matter of what? less than 5 seconds, probably. Does even he still believe he thinks her as a sister?

This was written by Julie Martin,who worked for both Leight and Balcer.It was directed by Frank Prinzi (The threeway interview room scenes had typical prinzi shots).

Good solid episode. It didnt have the intensity of "Consoler" and "Manhattan",or the pace and humour of "Trophy",but it was still well crafted and executed, with lots of remembrances from previous seasons,like Bedfellows but with 2 sisters instead of 2 brothers.

Favourite shot was the dog in the pram. Was that animal cruelty!Some would say so.Cruelty in kindness.

It was particularly clever in the way it condensed and reflected the telling of Gorens story with his mother through the telling of Mia/Sams story with their mothers....so that most of what related to them also related to Goren.I wondered how they were going to do that in such a short space of time in sessions only. So what is it Goren is covering up?

Three children and their manipulative mothers that they love so much: Sam,Mia and Goren.Complicated.

I hate the way they make us wait for the psyche scene until the end and then it is so short. Im just hoping we get a good aria between Goren and Gyson before it ends.It was unusual to see the therapist so unnerved and lost for words.Goren seemed to get at her as much as she got at him. Its an equal match that seems to be balancing out!

I felt she was expecting transference as all therapists are trained to recognise it, but he wasnt giving it.He was just struggling to be honest and that is what seemed to unnerve her.And thats what made it more interesting because unusual.He was looking for honest human interaction and she was just trying to be the therapist worried about transference, and therapy isnt necessarily honest in the end.In this way he was breaking through her to expose something as much as she was breaking through him to expose somthing.In that moment did she realise something?

Could be an interesting confrontation next week.

When Goren rushes out of the door he is backing away from the realisation of something that disturbs him.Are we going to get that next week? If so, i hope its a long aria!

"I look in the mirror every day and I see what you see".Damn those mirrors!

About mothers: Goren was the second-best-loved son in his family - Frank was the future scientist, the one she waited for on her birthday while Bobby sat there waiting for her to open his present. The one she gave her engagement ring to. Her child by a non-serial-murderer. Or is that what you meant, Maya got the love and attention Goren had not?

In the psych scenes I was surprised that the shrink did not recognize the transference. There is a major, unresolved relationship in Goren's life which he has been avoiding in past sessions, and then he comes in and begins hitting on the therapist (his term in both cases). He says he wants a human response, but referring to her as "empathic" and "beautiful" (forgot the third term), asking whether she could imagine him in a relationship, sounds a lot like he's asking her whether she could imagine herself in a relationship with him. And she rejects him, to his way of thinking, and he storms out, flinging accusations about. Rejection of casual banter, a clumsy attempt at flirtation shouldn't have evoked that response: nobody goes through life, especially in New York, without getting shot down occasionally. On the other hand, if she is a stand-in for somebody else, it would make sense. But why would this "brilliant analyst" not be expecting something similar?

The scientific method is under question?? The behavior of certain researchers, sure, but the science? Goren's practice is scientific method in action - gather evidence, devise a theory, test the theory, revise the theory based on the results of the test; repeat as needed.

The doctor's been feeding Goren pablum for weeks - you did what you had to do, you always do; you built a drawbridge, that's good ... Etc. Now he's asking for more pablum - "it's never too late" or some such - and doesn't like it when she wants him to try to go beneath the surface and identify what is really bothering him. This may all be about developing an authentic relationship, but they've only got two more sessions to go, and it seems unlikely the relationship is going to be between the cop and the shrink.

Every literary work is interpreted differently by every reader, of course. What's interesting about CI is how one group - and I haven't been here long enough to know if any of this applies to you - insists on reading in anything that has not been explicitly ruled out, and another seems to avoid taking into account anything that was only present in gestures, looks, etc. - but not dialog. This season, it seems there will be a final answer from the author as to his/their intention (which never stopped a lit crit from continuing to push his own interpretation, of course). An authorial answer is about to be provided to the puzzle of Goren, and boundaries placed on possible readings. Although if there's a chance for another season, it could be an ambiguous answer, of course.

Or perhaps they could switch attention to the puzzle of Eames, who has put up with Goren's shenanigans all these years? Goren had no choice as to how he behaved, he was driven by emotion, outside the magic circle of the case of the moment. But Eames, the practical one, gave up professional advancement and probably remarriage to support him?

Since November, Spider-man: Turn Off The Dark has set records for most previews ever, been slammed by critics, sent four actors to the hospital for broken bones, and replaced the woman at the top of the creative team. Now, as the show has opened to reviews that weren’t terrible, there’s a Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode spoofing the whole thing.

Airing Sunday night, the show re-imagines the drama behind the show as a murder mystery.

Would you expect anything else from the people behind this show? Since the original Law & Order made its debut in 1990 with the tagline “Ripped from the headlines,” the franchise (first L&O and then its various spinoffs), has fictionalized everything from the Robert Chambers / Jennifer Levin killing to the Martha Stewart insider-trading fiasco.

The Spider-man idea was a no brainer, according to Criminal Intent’s executive producer, Chris Brancato. “There’s some kind of fascination for this troubled production that has touched a nerve not only in New York City, but everywhere,” he said in his office a few weeks back as the episode was being shot. “We couldn’t do Spider-man because it’s a trademark of DC Comics so our writer, Julie Martin, came up with the idea of Icarus, the boy who flew too close to the sun, which I thought was hysterically funny.”

And fitting. In Greek mythology, Icarus was a young lad being held in prison with his father by an evil King. Dad, plotting their escape, makes two sets of wings, fashioned from wax, but warns his boy not to fly too close to the sun. Icarus gets carried away, the wax melts, and he comes crashing to his death in a manner not dissimilar from the Spider-man stuntman whose cable snapped last December, sending him flying into the orchestra pit.

In the case of the poor stuntman, he merely broke several bones, but the real life episode provided Brancato and Martin with a jumping off point from which to turn it into a case of foul play (a very meta example of art imitating art imitating life). An actor, playing the tragic Greek figure, becomes a tragedy himself when he’s flying too close to the sun and his chord snaps, sending him to his death.

As the trusty L&O detectives played by Vincent D'Onofrio and Kathryn Erbe investigate, they begin to find all sorts of suspicious behavior, from the show’s hard-charging director (who Brancato describes as “loosely based” on the Broadway show’s ousted director Julie Taymor) and her producer (with whom she’s been sparring.)

In the midst of the whole thing is a hilariously stupid fake-Broadway show, in which Icarus sings about how’s going to get “higher and higher while a Greek Chorus warns ominously, “You have got to stop, Icarus, this is Hubris.” (“Isn’t hubris a funny word,” laughs Brancato).

Of course, doing a spoof of the most costly Broadway production in American history required a fair amount of capital. Composers had to be hired, fake sets built, and fairly sizeable rigging costs spent. Brancato even brought in the crew from the Public Theater’s recent production of Angels In America to help design wings for the actors. Brancato estimates the episode cost around $3 million to do, the size of a small film. But Dick Wolf, the man who oversees all the different iterations of Law & Order wouldn’t have had it any other way. “The minute I mentioned it to him, he was like ‘do it,’” Brancato says. “I could barely get the words out of my mouth.

I also see things that I want/expect to see and I feel as if Goren is feeling as if her loves the therapist because he has never allowed himself to be so vulnerable before. I also think that he feels hurt by her apparent lack of response to his desire for a closer relationship.